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to accept his blindness and get on with his life.
    Broderick worked six days a week. When he wasn’t taking orders by phone with his braille machine and dictating them to his secretary later, he was making house calls at night. He quickly developed a very keen audio sense; many customers he dealt with on the phone were astonished when they finally met him. He’d quickly call out their name when he heard their voice. Until that point they had no idea he was blind.
    Later, when he and his wife were having children—seven in all—Broderick would tell each of them the same story as they reached the age when they could understand the real meaning of blindness. His daughter, Katy Broderick Duffy: “He’d tell us how he was hurt in the war and that when he came home he went with his mother to Lourdes, the famous shrine in France, to pray for a miracle. He said that before they put the water on his eyes, he asked the Lord for a favor: ‘If I can’t have my eyesight back, could you find a girl for me to marry?’ And that’s how he met my mother. When you’re little and you hear that story, you really think it
was
a miracle.”
    Broderick’s wife, Eileen, is a little skeptical of the story, but Tom insists it’s true, although his version is a bit breezier. “I said, ‘I know we don’t always get what we want, but what’s right for us. I’m really hoping to meet the woman for me—and if you want to throw in the eyes, too, that’s okay.’ ”

    Tom Broderick, feature in the
Chicago Tribune,
1944
    Not long after that, Tom and Eileen met on a blind date, no irony intended. Eileen was a twenty-three-year-old nurse and Tom was twenty-seven. She fell in love instantly. “That night, after the date, I went home, woke my cousin up, and said, ‘I’ve met the man I’m going to marry.’ She told me I’d been drinking too much and I should go to bed, but I knew.
    â€œYou didn’t think about his blindness. It just didn’t seem to matter. He was so unique. He ran a business by himself and didn’t need help from anyone, although it was a little tricky when we went out alone. I’d have to take him to the men’s room and ask someone to take him in. I’d stand outside. I think, being a nurse, I was a little more flexible. I understood that it was all just mechanics.
    â€œMy father was worried when I said I was marrying Tom. He just didn’t understand how Tom could take care of me and a family. But after three or four years of marriage they became very close. Tom’s mother started him off right. When he came back from the war she would not allow anyone to use the word
blind
in the house. Tom had to be treated with dignity and respect, and anything he wanted to try, he could do it. When he left his father’s business to set out on his own, she was happy.”
    Tom and Eileen had common roots as strongly faithful Roman Catholic Irish Americans. They settled into a life of the prosperous middle class on the south side of Chicago, where Tom’s business continued to flourish and their family grew quickly. During one five-year stretch Eileen had five children, and then another two later. Eileen says, “He was very involved in their upbringing. There were things he could do and those he couldn’t. It was kind of trial and error. He couldn’t change diapers but he could give them a bottle. We never talked about how to make things work. It wasn’t easy, but we did what we had to do.”
    The Broderick children were part of the equation of making things work. Daughter Katy says, “The blindness was just incidental. I’d see other people who were blind and not well adjusted and think, ‘What’s wrong with them?’ Later I realized not everyone had the strength and determination of my father. When I was little, my friends would say, ‘Your father’s not blind!’